Duration numbers and P.R.'s Danielle Kurtz Laban reports one centerpiece of Joe Biden's plan is a grant program intended to encourage states to invest in crime prevention as opposed to incarceration he also says he would allocate 1000000000 dollars per year toward juvenile justice reform the plan reaches across several major policy areas with proposals to decriminalize cannabis eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and expand pre-K. Access Biden's plans for criminal justice changes also include gun control measures such as universal background checks and a ban on assault style weapons his proposal comes a week ahead of the next Democratic debates which will feature 20 candidates he will take part in the 2nd night of the debates Daniel Kurtz Lavan n.p.r. News the Senate Finance Committee says there's a bipartisan deal between panel leaders to lower prescription drug prices Committee chairman crassly and the panel's top Democrat Ron Wyden will jointly present their plan to the full committee Thursday it would improve incentives to increase negotiation between drug plans and manufacturers the Dow up 47 this is n.p.r. News. In advance of testimony tomorrow on Capitol Hill former special counsel Robert Muller hasn't struction from the Justice Department not to stray beyond his official report on Russian election interference that in response to a request for guidance from Muller of particular concern redacted material in the report especially related to pending criminal prosecutions uncharged 3rd parties and executive privilege such as presidential communications privileges Muller's testifying before 2 committees tomorrow and separate sessions the House judiciary committee and House intelligence. Some birds are doubting to climate change but probably not fast enough for their species to survive according to new research we get details from N.P.R.'s Victoria ridge she is an ecologist at the lightness Institute and Berlin and she wanted to see how animals around the world were responding to climate change I've been going to expect that they would adapt but in looking through dozens of bird studies she found that some are starting to lay their eggs and migrate earlier this makes them more ready for the early onset of spring which is an effect of climate change that fad their behavior wasn't changing very quickly so in one day about the base of this is not sufficient to keep. A base of climate change rejects says this means that many bird species are risk of extinction if climate change continues and it's expected pay if she encourages people to take steps to help and her study is published in Nature Communications paying long n.p.r. News I'm Louise Schiavone n.p.r. News Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from the financial services firm of Raymond James offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise along with a legacy of putting clients financial wellbeing 1st learn more at Raymond James dot com. Solar energy has taken off across the u.s. Now Nashville native Jason Carney wants black communities to know if the energy savings and the green jobs are yours to be had no one controls to sell. Their support could they would get that care right now all you need is knowledge I married spreading solar in Nashville this afternoon on All Things Considered from n.p.r. News today for support comes from a Lifelong Learning Institute at u. Conn Waterbury. This is Fresh Air I'm Terry Gross our guest actor guy Leshner writes that you can survive longer without food than without sleep as a sleep disorder specialist he's seen plenty of patients with insomnia and just about every other kind of nocturnal problem night terrors narcolepsy sleep apnea sleepwalking sleep eating sleep driving and something called sexsomnia in his new book he describes some of his more challenging cases and the growing body of research into sleep and sleep problems guy less than yours a neurologist and head of the Sleep Disorder Center at Guy's Hospital in London he spoke to Fresh Air's Dave Davies about his new book The nocturnal brain nightmares neuroscience and the Secret World of Sleep Dr Guy less than her welcome to Fresh Air You've got some fascinating cases in this book but before we get to them I want to just cover a couple of basics a lot of us have heard of rapid eye movement sleep you know rem sleep where are our balls are darting rapidly and then there's none right rapid eye movement sleep non rem sleep if you want to just explain the differences between these 2 kinds of sleep well if one looks at the brain during sleep we now know that actually sleep is not a static status not a simple binary state whereby we're either awake or asleep what we now know is that actually there are a number of different brain states that occur while we sleep and we tend to devolve develop those brain states they sleep states into as you say read and will repeat on movement sleep and. Sleep in rem sleep actually when we look at the brain the brain from an electrical point of view looks to be very very active in fact the brain waves look very much like the brain waves of an awake brain and it's during this stage of sleep that we associate dreaming to occur particularly those. Dreams of a narrative structure plots evolving over night and during that stage of sleep when the brain is very active Actually it's probably when we are most separated from our bodies in fact although in this stage of sleep the our eyes dart back and forward pretty much every single muscle in our bodies apart from the muscles that control our eyes are completely paralyzed whereas in non rem sleep when we look at the brain waves the brain waves are slow to the large this is less associated with dreaming although we do dream of sorts in nonrandom sleep and it seems that these 2 different types of sleep probably have rather different functions Yeah what are the different functions Well I think the short answer to that is that we don't fully know we think that rem sleep is particularly important depending on the stage of life in the development of consciousness in learning in creativity in emotional processing where as non rem sleep is perhaps the stage of the stage of sleep during which those restores have functions that impact the brain and also impact the body occur so things like cleansing out toxic metabolites from the brain regulation of the immune system and a variety of other functions so it's the non rem sleep that people refer to as deep sleep right that it well not rem sleep in compass is this slightly different stage of sleep where the arm movements don't all back and forward but within on rem sleep there exists what we term stage one stage 2 and stage 3 sleep and stage 3 Sleep is a very deep sleep that we associate with waking up feeling restored feeling refreshed Ok let's talk about some of the disorders that confront you and Clay sleepwalking is one and you've had some patients with some pretty strange episodes you want to share a couple of them yes the one that always comes to mind 1st. Paul is is the 70 year old woman that I saw a few years ago who would be found to be driving up and down the seafront in her local town in the middle of the night and in fact in in earlier life she had had a motorbike and had been seen riding her motorbike apparently in her sleep and even at an earlier stage she was brought up in Canada and she would often go into the wilderness with the guides on camp and would wake up her tent mates groundling very loudly in the middle of the night of course they thought that they were being attacked by a grizzly bear and so she was soon sent back home because of the terror that she triggered in all her colleagues so so that's that's one example but. The sleepwalking or conditions associated with sleep walking real can really manifest in a number of ways and these include sleep terrors where people wake up in the middle of the night absolutely terrified screaming and shouting and then go back to sleep often with very little recall and then there are some some other conditions things like sexsomnia which is sexual behavior him sleep so sometimes these conditions sound very funny and and indeed can be very funny but on other occasions they can be really life changing resulting in in major injury or as one of the cases I describe in the book in a criminal conviction rate and in all you had another guy you had a patient Alex who had got an order Peters and then none of them do any of them remember any of this after the fact well we used to think that people don't really remember any thing that occurs in this stage that seems to relate to the fact that the brain in parts is in very deep sleep whilst another parts is awake what we have learned over the last few years is that actually quite a lot of people have some sort of eliminated recall they don't necessarily remember the details of of all the. And sore indeed the entire 80 of the event but sometimes they do experience a little snippet So Alex who you referred to would also do things like distribute glasses of water around the house for his sleeping flatmates without any recollection but those events that were associated with a much stronger emotional content so natural disasters on one occasion he dragged his girlfriend out of bed in the middle of the night because he thought that a tsunami was about to wash them away and those kinds of events with strong emotional context are often better remembered right so this category of sleep problem this is no ram parasomnia This is from the sleep where your eyeballs are not darting about. What do scientists think is going on when this happens well I talked earlier about the fact that we no longer consider sleep to be a binary state an on or off state but warts sleepwalking in particular tells us is that sleep is also not a global state and what I mean by that is that the whole of the brain. Is not necessarily in the same stage of sleep at the same time so that individuals who exhibit this group of disorders called an on ramp parasomnia as these unwanted behaviors that arise from non ram sweet typically the very deeper stages of nonrandom sleep what we see by either scanning them while they're exhibiting these behaviors or sometimes with electrodes is that certain parts of the brain can remain in very deep sleep in the pulse of the brain that in particular remain in very deep sleep or the frontal lobes which are that are the seat of our rational thinking on our planning are. Restricting on normal behaviors where as other parts of the brain can exhibit electrical activity that is really a kin to being wide awake so in particular the parts of the brain that are responsible for motion an area of the brain called the limbic system obviously. The the parts of the brain that responsible for movement and it's this dissociation this this disconnect between the different parts of the brain in terms of their sleep stages that actually give rise to these sorts of behaviors Ok so a part of our brain is sleeping soundly and some other part for some reason is around us and functioning Do we know why this happens. We know that sleep walking and these related conditions seem to run very strongly in families so there seems to be some sort of genetic predisposition to being able to enter into this disconnected brain state. And we know that anything that disrupts your sleep if you have that genetic predisposition can give rise to these behaviors So for example I've seen people who have had some new events triggered by the fact that they sleep in a creaky bed in their bed partner is rolled over sometimes or a large truck driving past in the street outside the bedroom but there are also internal manifestations internal processes that can give rise to these partial awakenings So for example snoring or more severe than snoring sleep apnea where people stop breathing in their sleep occasionally other sleep disorders like a condition called periodic limited disorder where people kick and so anything that causes a a change in the depth of sleep in people who are predisposed to this phenomenon of being in multiple sleep stages at the same time can give rise to these behaviors and we think that it's probably a throwback to certain evolutionary mechanisms so for example if you look at certain animals particularly aquatic mammals and certain species of birds they can sleep with only one half of their brain at the same time because that allows them to swim or to surface for air. Or to carry on flying whilst they are asleep and and so it's well established that having different parts of the brain in different stages of sleep occurs in nature and so it may be that this is a bit of an evolutionary hangover for us right you mention that it manifests in sleepwalking sleep driving sleep eating and something you refer to as sexsomnia you want to tell us what that is what your patients are exhibit so sex on near is really a type of normal Rem parasomnia that manifests with sexual behavior in the range of sexual behavior can be quite broad but it at its extremes that can result in people trying to pursue full blown sexual intercourse in sleep we used to think of sex on mirrors being a relatively rare phenomenon but actually whenever I do anything like this on the radio will write about it I'm usually inundated by e-mails or messages saying oh yes I do that and actually in the sleep lab if you directly also people about sex or near a lot of people actually will actually report it but they don't tend to go to their doctor with it because for most people it's not a particular problem where it does get to be a major problem is if it results in unwanted sexual behavior usually when you are sharing a bed with somebody who is not your regular partner and as I describe in one of the cases one of my patients ended up convicted of rape as a result of one of these events for a lot of people these 9 Rem parasomnia these are these these conditions can create serious problems so people for people like Jackie who was driving around in our neighborhood or Alex who was ordering pizzas. How are you how do you treat them. Well I think the 1st question is whether or not they want specific treatment as a as I talked about in the book with Jackie actually the reason why Jackie came to see me is because. She was worried about the fact that she was driving up and down her sea front in the middle of the night and thought that she might be a danger to herself and to other people and it was when she went to her family practitioner that she was told Well actually the only the only way to manage this might be to get her admitted into an inpatient secure psychiatric unit but actually she had gone through her life seeing this is very much part and parcel of who she was and she actually hit upon her own way of trying to manage this in that she bought herself a time locked safe why she would deposit her car keys and knew that she could not get her car keys out of the safe until 6 o'clock in the morning thus treating herself very well for people who are putting themselves at risk or putting other people at risk there are range of things that we can do the 1st thing is to try and optimize sleep generally because in people who are sleep deprived that in itself can pry him the brain for developing these sorts of behaviors but for more extreme cases and if that doesn't work then dealing with anything else that might be disrupting their sleep looking at their environment looking to see whether or not they snore and treating those issues is often a very successful way of dealing with these sorts of problems in very few cases when people are really putting themselves at risk then we will resort to certain types of medication to try and treat these sorts of events all kinds of medication Well the sorts of treatments that have been demonstrated to work include drugs like melatonin in certain instances benzodiazepines like clonazepam and also a range of antidepressant drugs now all of these drugs have potentially serious short and long term side effects so in any individual there are risks and the benefits of treating them with medication need to be weighed up very carefully so you manage it behaviorally if you can. And I think the. That's the case for many sleep disorders if we can avoid medication that would be the optimal way of managing these conditions. Is a neurologist and sleep disorder specialist His new book is called the nocturnal brain We'll talk more after a short break this is Fresh Air So what if I told you there's a way to save millions of lives the most beautiful invention it can save over $600000.00 children every year now what if you found out this wasn't some expensive high tech machine but one of the world's inventions washing hands with soap because sometimes the best solutions are the simplest ones that's next time on the Ted Radio Hour from n.p.r. . Tonight at 11 o'clock. This is Fresh Air and we're speaking with Dr Guy Leshner he is a neurologist and head of the Sleep Disorder Center at Guy's Hospital in London his new book is the nocturnal brain nightmares neuroscience and the Secret World of Sleep. Sleep apnea is an issue that really trouble some people what exactly is it a. Sleep apnea describes the phenomenon of on their way collapsing down in sleep so our airway is essentially a floppy t. That has some rigidity some structure to it as a result of multiple muscles and as we drift off to sleep those muscles lose some of their tension and the airway becomes a little bit more floppy now when it's a little bit floppy and it reverberates as we breathe in during sleep that will result in snoring the reverberation of the walls of the airway result in the noise but in certain individuals the airway can become floppy enough or is narrow enough for it to collapse down and to block or flow as we're sleeping. It's normal for that to occur every once in a while for everybody but if it occurs very frequently the what happens is that sleep can be disrupted sometimes 10 sometimes 20 sometimes even $100.00 times an hour because as we drift off to sleep the airway collapses down our oxygen levels drop our heart rate increases our brain wakes up again and our sleep is essentially being disrupted and then the airway becomes a little stiff and they then gradually start dozing off to into deeper stages of sleep and the cycle continues and you say that we're seeing an epidemic of sleep apnea. Yes So. As all girths as all weights increase the incidence of obstructive sleep apnea also increases sleep near is very strongly associated with obesity in the. That weight on the throws tore on the chest fat being deposited within the muscles in our throat can often result in our airway becoming narrower or actually be losing structural rigidity more easily so as we as a population get larger obstructive sleep apnea gets worse and the issue is beyond simply that of feeling sleepy because one's had one sleep disrupted all the way through the night we are now aware that obstructive sleep apnea has a range of long term implications on our health in terms of high blood pressure in terms of risk of cardiovascular disease risk of stroke impact on or a cognition so our mental clarity and there is now a emerging body of evidence to suggest that actually obstructive sleep apnea may be a factor in the development of conditions like dementia now there is this treatment this you know fairly invasive treatment where you wear a mask the c pap right it's called continuous positive airway pressure where it keeps putting pressure putting some air pressure in your mouth so that the airway doesn't collapse. That's not the easiest thing to deal with both for you and your sleep partners right it is a challenging piece of kit for many people I think on the plus side individuals with sleep apnea often feel transformed by the use of this piece of kit the sleep Mosk they say that within a few days they feel like completely different individuals they are sleeping through the night they're full of energy they feel mentally much clearer but we know that in the long term for many individuals the use of sleep can be quite challenging because essentially what you're doing is you're taking a mosque and you're strapping it to your face to create a seal and that's attached to a small machine. That generates this positive pressure and so strapping something on to your face in itself every night cannot be particularly easy to handle but if it's leaking if it's uncomfortable then that creates further issues and say we're constantly looking for alternatives to see Pap in certain individuals you do see other sleep aids you know mouth guards in the law for sleep apnea What do you think of them so melts guards provided that they are made properly and provided that they're comfortable can for many individuals be extremely useful and they centrally the way that they work is they 1st of all keep your mouth shut so what's your whilst you're sleeping and so that prevents your jaw falling back and narrowing the airway The 2nd thing that they do is they push the lower jaw forward and because the tongue is anchored to the lower jaw it pushes the base of the tongue forward and actually creates a bit more space at the back of the throat so for people with mild sleep near or indeed sometimes even even simple smaller so people who snore but don't have sleep apnea these devices which we call mandibular advancement devices can work extremely well I think there are a whole range of other consumer devices for which the evidence is much less firm and people often cycle through many of these things like nasal strips or little stands that actually are not so helpful and a lot of cases it sounds like the 1st step my beautiful to lose some weight weight loss is a very good way of treating sleep apnea what we don't know is for each individual how much weight they need to lose in order to reverse the sleep apnea that they have but certainly is there one proven long term way of curing obstructive sleep apnea. We're listening to the interview Fresh Air's Dave Davies recorded with Dr Guy Leshner a neurologist who heads the Sleep Disorder Center at Guy's Hospital in London his new book is called the nocturnal brain nightmares neuroscience and the Secret World of Sleep we'll hear more of the interview after a break and we'll listen back to an interview with Paul Krassner founder of the counterculture magazine the realist co-founder of the sixty's radical group the u.b.s. He died Sunday this is Fresh Air. Our Family Foundation supports w.h.y. Wise fresh air and its commitment to sharing ideas and encouraging meaningful conversation support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from Dana Farber Cancer Institute where research findings on how the immune system could attack cancer were shared worldwide to help change the course of cancer care more it Dana Farber dot org slash beat cancer. And from the group or family foundation supporting N.P.R.'s efforts to promote deeper thinking broader perspectives and trusted fact based information always with the goal of creating a more informed public I'm Jeremy Hobson working from home can help reduce traffic and all the stress that comes with a long commute it can also boost productivity when you stop. Look at the data available to us then almost 2 thirds of the key pieces of every leader that granted the world has fallen productivity has increased by as much as 50 percent so why isn't working from home more common That's next time on here and now. Today at 2 support for Connecticut Public Radio comes from New Morning Market in Woodbury family since 1971 offering local large Janica not g.m.o. Produce year round thanks to farmers in Connecticut and New York goodnesses and New Morning Market dot com you'll see cloudy skies today with scattered showers highs in the mid seventy's tonight mostly cloudy patchy fog and drizzle lows in the sixty's Wednesday as the partly sunny skies highs around 80 degrees Thursday sunny skies highs in the mid eighty's it's 1230. This is Fresh Air I'm Terry Gross let's get back to the interview Dave Davies recorded with actor guy Leshner a neurologist who heads the Sleep Disorder Center at Guy's Hospital in London he has a new book about treating a wide variety of sleep problems including insomnia sleepwalking sleep apnea and narcolepsy the book is called the nocturnal brain nightmares neuroscience and the Secret World of Sleep. You're right about narcolepsy which is a disease we've heard of and you know we always think of this as people who suddenly fall asleep in the middle of the day but it's a more wide ranging problem that you write about a guy named Adrian who had a different manifestation of what was going on with him so Adrian began in his forty's experiencing events where boy if he experienced very strong emotion and it was a very specific commotion it was an internal feeling of mirth so if he was telling a joke or he was the subject of something funny he would experience something very bizarre in that all of a sudden he would experience a sudden loss of muscle strength and would collapse to the floor the 1st time he experienced this he was trying to play a trick on his mother he had driven up outside the house and he noticed that she was in the garden and he crept up behind a garden fence and the last minute jumped out from behind the garden fence and smashed the garden fence in order to make a loud noise only to find himself a lawyer in the garden face down and this was really the 1st manifestation of this condition called cataplexy which is really part and parcel of narcolepsy for a majority of people so it is the loss of muscle strength associated with strong emotion usually laughter actually so what's happening here well the are the answer as to what's happening in no clips is really come from talks which is a are all the peculiar state of affairs in. In the last century Stanford identified a number of breeds of dogs that had not collapse and they bred them for many years before then identifying that these breeds of dogs that had not clips he had a mutation a genetic abnormality in a very particular gene that coded for a receptor for a chemical called a Rex in a hyper Crayton Now when this mutation was looked at in humans it wasn't found but over the years we've identified that actually this neurotransmitter this chemical in the very middle of the brain called a Rex in or hard to create in is responsible for regulating multiple aspects of sleep in humans what seems to occur is that there is some sort of immune process that triggers off the attack of a very small number of cells in the depth of a of the brain in an area called the lateral hypothalamus which are almost entirely or entirely destroyed by our own immune systems so when that area of the brain is damaged it disrupts the our ability to regulate waken sleep but it also damages our ability to regulate switching between dreaming sleep non-drinking sleep and that it's these 2 aspects the really explain most of the features of narcolepsy So how have you been able to help people with migraine or not let's say the moment is still viewed as a lifelong irreversible condition once you have it you will always have it but over the last 20 years or so there have been numerous strides in terms of options for treating narcolepsy and it very much depends on which aspect of narcolepsy you're trying to treat there are drugs that primarily treat the sleepiness there are drugs that primarily so treat the cataplexy and there are also other drugs that specifically treat the hallucinations or the sleep paralysis certs about trying to find the right drug or the right combination of drugs to treat all the. Aspects of the condition and other kind of environmental or behavioral things you can do that are so planned now are very helpful for people with narcolepsy So what we often encourage people to do is to work into their school life or the work life the opportunity to have 15 or 20 minutes of a nap at a planned juncture because that's a very good way of preventing sleepiness for the coming few hours so certainly there is an aspect of behavior that does help people with narcolepsy but we haven't talked about insomnia which is so common and I didn't get a very good night's sleep last night you say says insomnia and sleep deprivation are quite different in what way well when people have insomnia they think that they are sleeping very little and it and certainly that's the case for some individuals with insomnia but we know that insomnia is more than just one condition so some people for example will feel that they've had a very very poor quality sleep but actually when we monitor their brain waves their sleep over night in a sleep lab we can actually see that they're getting a pretty decent amount of sleep and so people can sometimes miss perceive the amount of sleep that they have in other individuals actually when one is slightly sleep restricted as a result of insomnia The brain tends to compensate for that by increasing the proportion of a very deep sleep so this only difficulty is is that people with insomnia have often read lots of stuff about how destructive how bad for every aspect of your health sleep deprivation is but the solution for people who are sleep deprived is much easier centrally You just need to increase the amount of time you spend in bed in the amount of time you sleep whereas for people with insomnia that's much more difficult to achieve it's not a question of how much of an opportunity they have to sleep is the very fact that they. Can't get off to sleep when they want to that is the issue or even if they do fall asleep is the fact that they feel that their sleep quality is poor and so they read all this stuff about how damaging sleep deprivation is and actually that increases their anxiety about the fact that they're not getting off to sleep and can result in this vicious cycle if you're a good sleeper you tend to associate being bad with being that. Place of comfort that place where you go and you feel cozy and you drift off to sleep and you wake up in the morning feeling wanted awakened refresh but for people with insomnia they often associate bed with great difficulty getting off to sleep with the dread of the night ahead with the fact that they know that when they wake up in the morning they will feel horribly unrefreshed and rested and so sleep that the environment that we normally would associate with sleep becomes an instrument of torture for them now people take pills like a benzo die as a pains. And medicines like you know zolpidem I give them brand name is Ambien. A good idea. Well there has been a bit of a sea change in the last few years away from these drugs we know that these drugs or soporifics their sedatives so the 1st thing to know is that they do not mimic normal sleep they're associated with some major problems so some of these drugs are for example associated with an increased risk of road traffic accidents in the morning because of a hangover effect they're associated with an increased risk of falls in the elderly for example and we know that people can develop a dependency on these drugs and can also have Beach rates by which I mean that they require ever increasing doses to obtain the same effect in the long term there are now some signals coming out of the work that is being done around the world that suggest that some of these drugs are actually associated with an increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia and that story is not completely understood and it may be that people who have insomnia or in themselves are predisposed to dementia or actually that insomnia may be a really early warning sign of dementia certainly gives us cause for concern of perhaps we shouldn't be using these drugs quite as liberally as we have done here. Sturrock Lee and so therefore the switch to behavior of approaches approaches what cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia has been driven by some of these concerns guy left center is a neurologist and sleep disorder specialist His new book is called the nocturnal brain We'll talk more after a short break this is fresh air for many of us the sound of summer is an elusive ice cream truck with a herd of kids giving chase. If that's the sound of summer morning edition is the sound of the start of your day shocking swimming pool news one in 4 people admitted to peeing in a pool as an adult to debates under Cupper come. Listen every day from n.p.r. News that's weekdays from 5 to 9 am. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from caring transitions a senior move resource to help families ease the stress of life's transitions offering relocation home clean outs and the resale of everyday household items locations a caring transitions dot com and from cable in support of the David Gilkey and zob you are to Monem a moral fund established to strengthen N.P.R.'s commitment to training and protecting journalists in high risk environments. This is Fresh Air and we're speaking with Dr Guy less than or he is a neurologist and head of the Sleep Disorder Center at Guy's Hospital in London he has a new book it's called the nocturnal brain nightmares neuroscience and the Secret World of Sleep. You know I've always been able to function pretty well on 5 or 6 hours of sleep at night or at least so I've thought and I deluding myself and my harming myself Well there are significant genetic influences as to how much sleep we need so this notion of 7 to 8 hours. Being the optimal amount is correct when one looks at a population but for a particular individual we know that there are people who get on absolutely fine with less than 7 hours or actually need noise or 10 hours to feel fully refreshing one of the great difficulties is that we know that there are genetic influences that influence not only all resistance to sleep deprivation in terms of how sleepy we are but also in terms of the cognitive effects of sleep deprivation so what I mean by that is that just because you don't necessarily feel sleepy does not imply that the sleep deprivation that you are experiencing is not having any impact on your mental abilities your performance and so perhaps the worst situation to be in is to be one of those individuals who doesn't get particularly sleepy when they're sleep deprived but is very law a bill to those cognitive effects you're a neurologist and there's a lot of research going on in various aspects of sleep what are the questions you're most interested in seeing answered in the coming year. Well I think the question of why we sleep still has to be answered I mean in a way you know we've moved tremendously far in terms of understanding why we sleep but there is still an awful lot to be learned you know we do this thing for 8 hours a night you know we spend far more time. Sleeping than doing anything else and to to to ask question why do eat or why do we drink it would be laughable yet we're still asking the question why do we sleep but the reality is that sleep probably has you know a multitude of different functions but at the moment we still don't really know the true aunts are there's lots of work still to be done the other areas I think of going to be of fundamental importance is understanding the association between sleep and some of the major issues from a public health perspective that we face in particular conditions like dementia if we are if we can really truly understand sleep disruption or sleep disorders can increase our risk of developing dementia than that provides a huge opportunity because sleep is one of the potentially major modifiable risk factors for these sorts of conditions and in understanding why we sleep are there so are there particular hypothesis that you think are promising or areas of research that you think could be particular revealing I think that what we're going to find now is that essentially this pattern of behavior has arisen. Through evolutionary mechanisms and as we have all been we as organisms have become more complicated. Our bodies have developed a lot of different functions that have taken the opportunity of this 7 or 8 hours noite you know. Controlling our blood pressure controlling our immune systems. Regulating various functions of the brain memory learning creativity and I think that what we're going to end up finding is that basically any waking activity any physiological activity that we undertake in. Is going to be in some way influenced by sleep so I think the answer to why we sleep is going to be multiple answers not just one in the interests of us all sleeping a little better do you have recommendations for what we should do when we go to bed or or not do. Using gadgets in particular is not very good frost sleep if you are and this one's going to comes down to genes we know that there is huge variability in terms of the impact of of light on sleep in that we have receptors in the back of our eyes cool retinal Gang be in cells that are not involved in vision at all but what they essentially are are a direct gateway between environmental light and the part of our brain that regulates our cicada and rhythm our internal body clock and so for many individuals exposure to bright light particularly blue lights is a very good way of suppressing our own intrinsic melatonin Melatonin is a hormone that's produced by the brain and it's really the chemical signal to the brain in the rest of the body that it's time to go to sleep so what you're potentially doing by for example using your your tablet or laptop or a mobile phone more blatant The night is you're exposing yourself to large amounts of blue lights which can really prevent you from drifting off to sleep quite as easily as you otherwise should and can actually have a negative impact on the quality of your sleep so the 1st thing that I would say is Troyer and avoid bright light exposure late at night the 2nd thing is to make sure that you only go to bed when your sleepy brain likes a rhythm when it comes to sleep but you should not be slavish Lee keeping to that rhythm and going to bed when you're not. When you're not sleepy because what that then does if your ex if you are in some way predisposed to insomnia it actually strengthens the association between being in bed. Add and having difficulty getting off to sleep rather than being in bed drifting off to sleep so it is reading in bed before you're not off a good idea yes provided you're not reading on or on a tablet or a laptop you know our old style analog book I would highly recommend it's a good way of reducing your light exposure keeping your mind a little bit active so that you're not concentrating on the prospect of having to drift off to sleep until you're really tired it's a very good way of keeping in mind occupied I'm told there are part cast that letter yes I do hope you fall a good idea well you know I've I've I've occasionally out of interest listened to one of these podcast which was a man in a sort of deep south accent murmuring gently telling a very boring story. And the aim of the aim of it is to distract you from the process of getting off to sleep so just providing enough distraction that you're not concentrating on oh my God I've got to go to sleep I'm going to be awake all night but not providing enough interest to keep you awake at night I think the key thing is to work out what works for you and if that works for you great if a white noise generator or a pink noise generator works for you then great let's say the same thing is the case for caffeine you know there are some people for whom having 2 shots of espresso before they go to bed will have absolutely no impact on their sleep whatsoever and if that works for you then go for it if you know that caffeine is going to disrupt your your sleep then avoid it from lunchtime onwards because caffeine can depending on how much of it you drink and hang around for a long long time it's about understanding your own sleep and working out what works for you. Or guy lesson or it's been really interesting that thanks so much for speaking with us thanks very much for having me. Dr Guy Leshner is a neurologist who heads the Sleep Disorder Center at Guy's Hospital in London his new book is called the nocturnal brain nightmares neuroscience and the Secret World of Sleep coming up we remember Paul Krassner founder of the counterculture magazine The realist and co-founder of the sixty's radical group the u.b.s. He died Sunday this is Fresh Air coming up on the next episode of the Carlin McEnroe show one of my favorite episodes of all time mainly because it involves me picking on being har a lot the show is about Ultimate Frisbee it's a sport or is it is it more than a buncha yo yos hanging around the park doesn't deserve to be taken more seriously you'll find out. Today it was an 8 o'clock support comes from health that means and wisdom house retreating conference center and much view. Support comes from our members and from the Mark Twain House a museum with a writer's weekend September 26th or 28 featuring the founding editor of The Onion Scott decorous a newspaper columnist Gene Weingarten and you know Beretta you can find more information at Mark Twain House dot org you'll see cloudy skies today with scattered showers highs in the mid seventy's tonight mostly cloudy patchy fog and drizzle lows in the sixty's Wednesday as the partly sunny skies highs around 80 degrees Thursday sunny skies highs in the mid eighty's. This is Fresh Air We're going to listen back to an interview with Paul Krassner who was a prominent figure of the 60s counter-culture he died Sunday at the age of 87 was considered one of the fathers of the underground press because he published an edited the realist magazine from 1968 to 1974 he described the realist as a magazine of free thought criticism and satire pieces that were too radical or controversial for the mainstream press found a home in the realist Lenny Bruce Jean Shepherd Abbie Hoffman Terry Southern and Jules Feiffer were some of the people Krasner published he also contributed his own interviews with people ranging from Woody Allen to Patty Hearst. Described as editorial philosophy as combining entertainment with the 1st Amendment he was also famous for co-founding the Along with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin the hippies were a politically and culturally radical group whose protests and demonstrations sometimes took the form of pranks or street theater I spoke with Krasner in 1988. You started the realist in 1988 and this was really before the underground press or at least before the alternative press was given that name of the underground press why did you see a need for something like the realist for publishing the kinds of things that were either so radical or so bizarre that they wouldn't appear in the mainstream press Well I had been doing freelance stuff for Mad magazine and for the Steve Allen Show and I just came in contact with more and more taboos the 1st thing I did for Mad Magazine was a thing called if comic strip characters answered those ads on the back of magazines and we had Dick Tracy getting a nose job at Al you getting rid of his superfluous hair who wanted to have olive oil sending away for falsies and the publisher said no he didn't want to do that because his mother would object and I said Yeah but your mother is not a typical subscriber and he said yes but she's a typical mother so there was really no humor for adults in this country except for maybe cartoons in The New Yorker this was before Doonesbury before National Lampoon before Spike magazine before Saturday Night Live so I had a pretty clear field to say in print what I would say in the living room so tell me more about your vision for the realist when you started it well 1st thing I was still living with my parents at the time I was publishing what was considered the hippest magazine in the country and I was living with my parents and I remember they were watching a telethon and I suddenly blurted out this is barbaric and they looked at me as if I were a Martian and of course in their eyes I was a Martian and I think it was a kind of species. A need for community for an extended family so that I knew I couldn't be the only Martian on my block or there was no hope and so the real is served as a kind of network for Martians all over the country and. The 1st thing I published in fact and I did 58 was a piece a child's primer on telephones called c. The tired man which talked about the contradictions of. Having the private sector raise money to cure leukemia while the government was exploding test atomic bombs which had fallout that caused leukemia you were one of the founders of the if he's with any Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and it was you who actually coined the name so what did you tell us how you did it how you came up with it well we were having a meeting this was on the afternoon of the 7 but 31st 1970 on the Lower East Side of New York at the home of Abbie and Anita Hofmann there were several of us there and we were planning a protest to the Democratic convention in Chicago that year 1000 in the coming the coming year 968 I asked the journalist knew that reporters need the Who for the who what when where and why and I remembered that a few months before that the diggers which were sort of psychedelic social workers in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury that they had held a parade for the death of hippie because they felt that it had become such a media exploited term and so they want to be called free Americans which was you know you don't find people yelling Get a haircut you lousy free American so I knew that it needed something else and I started going through the alphabet it be a bit b. Could be dippy and I was about to give up when I said yes be to myself and realize that would be perfect and then work backwards to see what acronym that could come from everything has to be an acronym right. Well just to give it an organic derivation even though I was working backwards so the the letters why I and p. P's would derive out of that and then again working backwards I saw that the the words youth and international and party were so appropriate because it was a youth movement it was international and it was a party in both senses of the word. I'm sure in the sixty's that. You always wondered if you were followed by the f.b.i. And what was in your f.b.i. Files I don't know if you ever filed under the Freedom of Information it oh no I got my files but if I and my CIA files both Yeah what was one of the most interesting things in your file I guess the most frightening was that in 1969 the f.b.i. Published and distributed anonymously a flyer which had on it swat a swastika large swastika in each square of the swastika was a photo of Jerry Rubin Abbie Hoffman Mark Rudd of s.d.s. And myself and then the headline said lampshades lampshades lampshades and the copy underneath said that the only way the oppressed blacks would get rid of their oppression would be for the elimination of these Jewish leaders then the approval letter from the Washington office of the f.b.i. Said that the publication of distribution of this flyer should not be traceable to the bureau this flyer which has the facetious suggestion for the elimination of these leaders so I guess they were covering their tracks though if anybody killed us they could say well we said facetious So that was the most frightening thing that you know that especially if it was being done with taxpayers' money did you ever get rid of the paranoia that those maybe somebody tapping your phone or following you. Well I tried to avoid the paranoia by. Having as a criterion that everything I said was on the record and so I virtually had no secrets except perhaps the name of my marijuana dealer but. Everything I did was really legal there was one demonstration that I got arrested for and they dismissed it for lack of evidence and the judge started lecturing us saying next time don't tempt fate and I started arguing I said well wait is freedom of assembly a tempting fate and my lawyer jabbed me in the ribs and said shit quiet This is my 1st case don't blow it for me. Well listen Paul Krassner thank you very much for talking with us my pleasure Paul Krassner recorded in 1908 he died Sunday at the age of 87. Tomorrow on Fresh Air My guest will be Lulu Wong Well talk about drawing on her own experiences to write and direct the new film The farewell when her grandmother in China was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and given 3 months to live the family flew to China to see her but decided not to tell her about the prognosis to spare her the anxiety Lulu had to be tray her instincts and hide the truth too I hope you'll join us Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller I'm Terry Gross We'll close with a song featuring our Nevels singing lead He died yesterday at age 81 he was a founding member of the Neville Brothers and the meters famous for their New Orleans sound as the Rolling Stone of bitchery says perhaps no song better summed up art Nevels influence than Mardi Gras Mambo which he recorded with a hawk cats when he was 16 here it is. A very. Modern. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from Life Lock life like with Norton reminds consumers that cyber criminals can steal identities sell personal information on the dark web and even in fact mobile devices with malware learn more at Life Lock dot com. And from the family foundation supporting shatterproof a national nonprofit dedicated to ending the devastation of addiction and transforming treatment in America learn more at shatterproof dot org This is Connecticut Public Radio. N.p.r. . 90.5. 1 Norwich 89.1. 88.5. W. 258 stores at 99.5 and Betty n.p.r. Got word. If I see Hearst Corporation do you think credit rating agencies are. We are. Predominantly paper company which is fine because there is no service but the fact that we're in a lot of. People by surprise I'm coming. To see you. Tonight at 630 and knowing what the weather is always changing listen for forecasts for Meteorologist Karen r.t.s. During Morning Edition and All Things Considered so far comes from companions and home makers. Good afternoon I'm It's 1 o'clock rebroadcast of the call and McEnroe shows next support for it comes from health and museum and wisdom and wisdom House retreat in conference center and much. Often when I'm walking in Elizabeth Park in Hartford I'll see a group of people playing ultimate Frisbee and it's often coed by which I mean there are 13 men and one woman but it looks like fun I mean it's sort of a gentle informal kind of game and it looks like fun and it looks like the kind of thing that I would like to do except that I'm 62 years old my niece or shot from playing other sports and I can throw a very well but it looks like fun however there are people who play this game and its name has been changed to Ultimate who feel as though it's a real sport or should be in the Olympics that it should be in the sports pages I have a little bit of trouble with that but I also have people of whom I'm very fond of who play ultimate frisbee So we'll talk to them and some other people about all that today. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Louise Schiavone the man who led the U.K.'s leave campaign 3 years ago is about to take office as prime minister of Great Britain Boris Johnson former foreign secretary to outgoing prime minister trays of May and former mayor of London defeated rival Jeremy Hunt in the conservative leadership contest wanting 2 thirds of the votes in a ballot of that $160000.00 party members across the u.k. He'll be installed as prime minister tomorrow a dispute has erupted between Russia and South Korea over an air confrontation with regional implications N.P.R.'s Lucy and Cam reports the Russian Defense Ministry denies charges that its warplanes violated South Korean airspace even as officials in Seoul insist there weren't curtains Russian t.v. Carried a statement by the Defense Ministry on the national Well you know here comes thought to us that I think it was tense ministry on confirmed 2 to pull off $95.00 bombers were in the area but made no mention of a 50 command and control plane at which South Korea says it fired warning shots the ministry said the bombers were flying over neutral waters and that South Korean fighters made no attempt to communicate with the Russian pilots and conducted unprofessional maneuvers later the ministry said the 2 Russian bombers were holding the 1st joint long distance air patrol together with 2 Chinese bombers the exercise was not directed at 3rd countries Japan's has its scrambled aircraft to intercept the planes will South Korea and Japan are key u.s. Allies in the region. N.p.r. News Moscow the Senate votes today on whether to extend funding for the $911.00 Victim Compensation Fund N.P.R.'s once or Johnston reports.